Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, ecologist, and entomologist who developed the field of sociobiology.
Born in Alabama, Wilson found an early interest in nature and frequented the outdoors. At age seven, he was partially blinded in a fishing accident; due to his reduced sight, Wilson resolved to study entomology. After graduating from the University of Alabama, he earned his doctorate at Harvard University, where he distinguished himself in multiple fields. In 1956, he co-authored a paper defining the theory of character displacement. In 1967, he developed the theory of island biogeography with Robert MacArthur.
Wilson was the Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus in Entomology for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, a lecturer at Duke University, and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. The Royal Swedish Academy awarded Wilson the Crafoord Prize. He was a humanist laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction (for On Human Nature in 1979, and The Ants in 1991) and a New York Times bestselling author for The Social Conquest of Earth, Letters to a Young Scientist, and The Meaning of Human Existence.
Wilson's work received both praise and criticism during his lifetime. His 1975 book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis was a particular flashpoint for controversy, and drew criticism from the Sociobiology Study Group. Wilson's interpretation of the theory of evolution resulted in a widely reported dispute with Richard Dawkins about multilevel selection theory. Examinations of his letters after his death revealed that he had supported the psychologist J. Philippe Rushton, whose work on race and intelligence is widely regarded by the scientific community as deeply flawed and racist.
Early life, family and education Edward Osborne Wilson was born on June 10, 1929, in Birmingham, Alabama, the only child of Inez Linnette Freeman and Edward Osborne Wilson Sr. According to his autobiography, Naturalist, he was raised in various towns in the Southern US which included Mobile, Decatur, and Pensacola. From an early age, he was interested in natural history. His father was an alcoholic who eventually died by suicide. His parents allowed him to bring home black widow spiders and keep them on the porch. They divorced when he was seven years old.
In the same year that his parents divorced, Wilson blinded himself in his right eye in a fishing accident. Despite the prolonged pain, he did not stop fishing. He did not complain because he was anxious to stay outdoors, and never sought medical treatment. Several months later, his right pupil clouded over with a cataract. He was admitted to Pensacola Hospital to have the lens removed. Wilson writes, in his autobiography, that the "surgery was a terrifying [19th] century ordeal". Wilson retained full sight in his left eye, with a vision of 20/10. The 20/10 vision prompted him to focus on "little things": "I noticed butterflies and ants more than other kids did, and took an interest in them automatically." Although he had lost his stereoscopic vision, he could still see fine print and the hairs on the bodies of small insects. His reduced ability to observe mammals and birds led him to concentrate on insects.
At age nine, Wilson undertook his first expeditions at Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. He began to collect insects and he gained a passion for butterflies. He would capture them using nets made with brooms, coat hangers, and cheesecloth bags. Going on these expeditions led to Wilson's fascination with ants. He describes in his autobiography how one day he pulled the bark of a rotting tree away and discovered citronella ants underneath. The worker ants he found were "short, fat, brilliant yellow, and emitted a strong lemony odor". Wilson said the event left a "vivid and lasting impression". He also earned the Eagle Scout award and served as Nature Director of his Boy Scouts summer camp. At age 18, intent on becoming an entomologist, he began by collecting flies, but the shortage of insect pins during World War II caused him to switch to ants, which could be stored in vials. With the encouragement of Marion R. Smith, a myrmecologist from the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, Wilson began a survey of all the ants of Alabama. This study led him to report the first colony of fire ants in the U.S., near the port of Mobile.
Wilson has stated he attended 15 or 16 schools during 11 years of schooling. He was concerned that he might not be able to afford to go to a university, and he tried to enlist in the US Army, intending to earn federal government financial support for his education. He failed the Army medical examination due to his impaired eyesight, but he was able to afford enroll at the University of Alabama, where he earned his Bachelor of Science in 1949 and Master of Science in biology in 1950. The next year, Wilson transferred to Harvard University.
Appointed to the Harvard Society of Fellows, he traveled on overseas expeditions, collecting ant species from Cuba and Mexico and traveling the South Pacific, including Australia, New Guinea, Fiji, and New Caledonia, as well as to Sri Lanka. In 1955, he received his Ph.D. and married Irene Kelley.
In Letters to a Young Scientist, Wilson stated his IQ was measured as 123.
Career
From 1956 until 1996, Wilson was part of the faculty of Harvard. He began as an ant taxonomist and worked on understanding their microevolution, specifically how they developed into new species by escaping environmental disadvantages and moving into new habitats. He developed a theory of the "taxon cycle".
In collaboration with mathematician William H. Bossert, Wilson developed a classification of pheromones based on insect communication patterns. In the 1960s, he collaborated with mathematician and ecologist Robert MacArthur in developing the theory of species equilibrium. In the 1970s he and biologist Daniel S. Simberloff tested this theory on tiny mangrove islets in the Florida Keys. They eradicated all insect species and observed the repopulation by new species. Wilson and MacArthur's book The Theory of Island Biogeography became a standard ecology text.
In 1971, he published The Insect Societies, which argued that insect behavior and the behavior of other animals are influenced by similar evolutionary pressures. In 1973, Wilson was appointed the curator of entomology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. In 1975, he published the book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis applying his theories of insect behavior to vertebrates, and in the last chapter, to humans. He speculated that evolved and inherited tendencies were responsible for hierarchical social organization among humans. In 1978 he published On Human Nature, which dealt with the role of biology in the evolution of human culture and won a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
Wilson was named the Frank B. Baird Jr., Professor of Science in 1976. After he retired from Harvard in 1996, he became the Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus. In 1981 after collaborating with biologist Charles Lumsden, he published Genes, Mind and Culture, a theory of gene-culture coevolution. In 1990 he published The Ants, co-written with zoologist Bert Hölldobler, winning his second Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
In the 1990s, he published The Diversity of Life (1992); an autobiography, Naturalist (1994); and Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998) about the unity of the natural and social sciences. Wilson was praised for his environmental advocacy, and his secular-humanist and deist ideas pertaining to religious and ethical matters.
Wilson was characterized by several titles during his career, including the "father of biodiversity", "ant man", and "Darwin's heir". In a PBS interview, David Attenborough described Wilson as "a magic name to many of us working in the natural world, for two reasons. First, he is a towering example of a specialist, a world authority. Nobody in the world has ever known as much as Ed Wilson about ants. But, in addition to that intense knowledge and understanding, he has the widest of pictures. He sees the planet and the natural world that it contains in amazing detail but extraordinary coherence".
Disagreement with Richard Dawkins Although evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins defended Wilson during the so-called "sociobiology debate", a disagreement between them arose over the theory of evolution. The disagreement began in 2012 when Dawkins wrote a critical review of Wilson's book The Social Conquest of Earth in Prospect Magazine. In the review, Dawkins criticized Wilson for rejecting kin selection and for supporting group selection, labeling it "bland" and "unfocused", and he wrote that the book's theoretical errors were "important, pervasive, and integral to its thesis in a way that renders it impossible to recommend". Wilson responded in the same magazine and wrote that Dawkins made "little connection to the part he criticizes" and accused him of engaging in rhetoric.
In 2014, Wilson said in an interview, "There is no dispute between me and Richard Dawkins and there never has been, because he's a journalist, and journalists are people that report what the scientists have found and the arguments I've had have actually been with scientists doing research". Dawkins responded in a tweet: "I greatly admire EO Wilson & his huge contributions to entomology, ecology, biogeography, conservation, etc. He's just wrong on kin selection" and later added, "Anybody who thinks I'm a journalist who reports what other scientists think is invited to read The Extended Phenotype". Biologist Jerry Coyne wrote that Wilson's remarks were "unfair, inaccurate, and uncharitable". In 2021, in an obituary to Wilson, Dawkins stated that their dispute was "purely scientific". Dawkins wrote that he stands by his critical review and doesn't regret "its outspoken tone", but noted that he also stood by his "profound admiration for Professor Wilson and his life work".
Support of J. Philippe Rushton Prior to Wilson's death, his personal correspondences were donated to the Library of Congress at the library's request. Following his death, several articles were published discussing the discrepancy between Wilson's legacy as a champion of biogeography and conservation biology and his support of scientific racist pseudoscientist J. Philippe Rushton over several years. Rushton was a controversial psychologist at the University of Western Ontario, who later headed the Pioneer Fund.
From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, Wilson wrote several emails to Rushton's colleagues defending Rushton's work in the face of widespread criticism for scholarly misconduct, misrepresentation of data, and confirmation bias, all of which were allegedly used by Rushton to support his personal ideas on race. Wilson also sponsored an article written by Rushton in PNAS, and during the review process, Wilson intentionally sought out reviewers for the article who he believed would likely already agree with its premise. Wilson kept his support of Rushton's racist ideologies behind-the-scenes so as to not draw too much attention to himself or tarnish his own reputation. Wilson responded to another request from Rushton to sponsor a second PNAS article with the following: "You have my support in many ways, but for me to sponsor an article on racial differences in the PNAS would be counterproductive for both of us." Wilson also remarked that the reason Rushton's ideologies were not more widely supported is because of the "... fear of being called racist, which is virtually a death sentence in American academia if taken seriously. I admit that I myself have tended to avoid the subject of Rushton's work, out of fear."